


Defying Gravity

by m3aculpa



Category: Glee
Genre: Bullying, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Homophobic Language, Minor Violence, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/325069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3aculpa/pseuds/m3aculpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-five things you might not know about Kurt Hummel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defying Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Defying Gravity  
>  **Fandom:** Glee  
>  **Rating:** PG  
>  **Word Count:** 1380 words  
>  **Character(s):** Kurt Hummel, mentions of Burt Hummel, Karofsky, Puck, Finn, Rachel and Mr Schue  
>  **Pairing(s)** : None  
>  **Warnings/notes** : Pre-series. Bullying-related violence  
>  **Summary:** Twenty-five things about Kurt Hummel you might not know.  
>  **a/n:** The funny thing is, short as it is, I've been working on this since last summer. It was only recently, after spending a day working frantically on an essay, that I stuck around on campus and actually finished the story.

  
**Defying Gravity**   


  
**  
  
1.** Kurt Hummel’s earliest memory is of falling down and crying afterward. He also remembers how easily his dad picked him up, how securely he held him to his chest and how he barely jostled him as they walked on.  


 **  
  
2.** Kurt doesn’t remember asking for sensible heels – he remembers receiving them. He remembers the funny, conflicted look on his dad’s face when he watched his son slip them on with glee.  


 **  
  
3.** All that Kurt has left to remember his mum by is the drawer smelling of her perfume. Inhaling the sweet scent will instantly take him back to evenings where he sat in her lap and they watched musicals and listened to show tunes.  


 **  
  
4.** His dad’s hands will always keep him safe and protected, which was something he realised when his dad held his had at mum’s funeral.  


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5.** They don’t tell him what killed his mum until he’s a teenager. One day she was there, one day she was gone. He remembers clinging to his dad in confused terror – terrified that if he let go off his dad, he would disappear too. When he’s a teenager he found out that his mum had suffered a brain aneurism in her sleep. She’d probably not have noticed a thing.  


 **  
  
6.** The first time a boy calls him a freak is when he’s seven and he opts to go horse-riding with the girls, rather than to go go-carting with the rest of the boys.  


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7.** His one and only attempt at horse-riding left him with a sore body (his entire body was sore afterward) and an exhilarated feeling of being high off the ground and the horse and him melting together as one.  


 **  
  
8.** The reason he never tries again, is because he is afraid that the experience will be disappointing. That he can never have that freedom of his first ride again.  


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9.** The first time he’s called a ‘fag’ is when he begins high school. He’s starting to realise that he’s very different from everybody else (or rather he’s getting out of his denial), so he doesn’t say a thing, but flinches, and keeps walking with hunched shoulders.  


 **  
  
10.** What he remembers of his first dumpster dive is the feeling of complete disbelief and hurt that people, classmates, would throw him into the garbage like he _is_ garbage.  


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11.** What Puck, Finn or even Karofsky never knows is that Kurt has broken two fingers, sprained his ankle innumerable times and cut himself on broken glass falling into the dumpster.  


 **  
  
12.** They do know that they once gave him a concussion. They don’t care.  


 **  
  
13.** His first slushie facial caught him completely unaware and it felt like being bitch slapped by an iceberg.  


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14.** What gets to him is the indignity of getting ice out from his underwear and how hard it is to get the syrup out of his hair. He’s got tears of humiliation burning in his eyes as he tries to wash himself clean.  


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15.** The dumpster dives, the slushie facials, the pee balloons, the being slammed into lockers – it hurts. Of course it hurts. But it’s not what hurts the worst. It’s the fact that they’re denying his human worth, reducing him to something sub-human and denying him the right to exist. Making their right to exist much bigger than his.  


 **  
  
16.** What hurts even more is the inaction by the school and its staff, seemingly cementing his lack of worth in the eyes of his school mates. There’s a lot of talk about how all children are equal, but in reality that’s not the case. The teachers are just as prone to prejudice and ignorance as anybody else. It shows in the way they look away.  


 **  
  
17.** He wants to become famous to prove them wrong. He will show them that one day, he’ll be the one everybody will see and know the name of, while his tormentors are stuck here in Lima, working their menial jobs and living their small lives. They’ll be stuck here and he, Kurt Hummel, will leave and never look back. He will tell his story to the world and never be ignored again.  


 **  
  
18.** But sometimes – most of the times – he will deny them this influence they have on his life. He will become famous – not for a sense of revenge, but because he genuinely loves what he’s doing. When he’s sitting in the couch on some talk-show, he’ll smile when they ask about his childhood and casually say that he had a normal adolescence. He will deny them their worth like they have denied his. They will know that he’s ignorant of their existence at this point.  


 **  
  
19.** The first time he finds a support site for gay teens, he starts feeling less alone. At first, he’s too afraid to post anything. He lurks and read the forums. He reads the coming out stories with teary-eyed smiles when they have a happy outcome and with tears falling when they end up with an awful outcome. He’s surprised by the amount of stories that are neutral – that the family or the friends already knew and already accepted it about their children, siblings, friends.  


 **  
  
20.** Eventually he starts posting. He tells them about his situation and the support he gets is over-whelming. When he reads the posts, he’s got to press a hand against his mouth to muffle the sounds he’s making. They’re between a sob and a laugh. He can’t really tell which. Slowly he starts to build up courage to tell his dad. But it will be some time before he does it.  


 **  
  
21.** The first time he’s accused of pandering to a stereotype, it’s devastating. The attack is deeply personal and tells him that he solely will undermine the gay movement. Kurt deletes all the links to the site – despite having the address memorised – and feels like he doesn’t want to leave the house again. This is his community and people are attacking him for who he is, within the community. This is the place where people are supposed to support him because they’ve all been through this. They all know how harsh the world is. He cries a little of frustration. He didn’t expect this.  


 **  
  
22.** He’d like to say that he immediately logged onto the site and told the person the truth. In fact, it takes him close to a week to gather up just enough indignation to reply. He tells the person that he’s not pandering to a stereotype – he’s being himself. He is Kurt Hummel – fabulous, fashion-loving gay teen who loves showtunes but also working on cars. He is who he is, and maybe he’s a stereotype, but he’ll live his life as the person he wants to be, thank you very much.  


 **  
  
23.** What few people get is that Kurt used to be a sweet, if a little bit naïve, boy. It took only a few weeks of being the prey in McKinley High to take it out of him, as he started keeping changes of clothes in his locker, broke his first finger and got pelted with pee balloons. It took the sweetness right out of him.  


 **  
  
24.** In the beginning, he was the lonely outsider. He never really had any friends; as if they were afraid to be contaminated by him, which is why he desperately holds on to any popularity he can gain. He never wants to be that alone again.  


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25.** Kurt has always loved to sing. He’s obviously very good at it, too. But he never signs up for Glee club for a number of reasons – the main being how he finds Rachel Berry to be annoying and the fact that there’s nobody creepier than Mr Ryerson. When Mr Ryerson is fired and Mr Schuester decides to start the Glee club anew, something clicks into place. Kurt is tired of being invisible. Signing up for audition and deciding his audition piece – it’s _easy_. He sings Mr Cellophane, sings his heart out, because never again will people look right through him, walk right by him, never knowing he’s there. He’s decided. And when Mr Schuester smiles and welcomes him to the Glee club, his heart soars and it really feels as if he can defy gravity.  


  



End file.
